


Autumn leaves

by GaneWhoo



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: F/F, First attempt at writing them, Fix-It, Set after 4x15, angst but a happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-12-15 17:42:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11811006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GaneWhoo/pseuds/GaneWhoo
Summary: The unsaid words weigh heavy on Myka’s tongue, thick and so full of emotions it makes her heart ache, in the relative quietness of the car as they drive away.Pete doesn’t try to talk, for once, and she feels a surge of fondness for this man who is still standing by her side after everything they’ve been through and all the many dangers and adventures that are, without a doubt, awaiting them. He’s looking ahead and she knows he wants to ask if she is alright, but she can’t bring herself to talk, not when she is fighting the tears gathered at the very edge of her eyes and already threatening to fall. She gives him an imperceptible but grateful nod when he settles on turning the music on, keeping the volume low, but letting the old jazz accents fill the vehicle enough to prevent any attempt at a conversation.She fights against the urge to look back, with her hand still burning after the desperate wave she had offered as a last goodbye to the woman she still thinks of as her soulmate.





	Autumn leaves

The unsaid words weigh heavy on Myka’s tongue, thick and so full of emotions it makes her heart ache, in the relative quietness of the car as they drive away.

Pete doesn’t try to talk, for once, and she feels a surge of fondness for this man who is still standing by her side after everything they’ve been through and all the many dangers and adventures that are, without a doubt, awaiting them. He’s looking ahead and she knows he wants to ask if she is alright, but she can’t bring herself to talk, not when she is fighting the tears gathered at the very edge of her eyes and already threatening to fall. She gives him an imperceptible but grateful nod when he settles on turning the music on, keeping the volume low, but letting the old jazz accents fill the vehicle enough to prevent any attempt at a conversation.

She fights against the urge to look back, with her hand still burning after the desperate wave she had offered as a last goodbye to the woman she still thinks of as her soulmate.

She wishes, not for the first time since she had laid her eyes on H.G.’s silhouette in what had seemed like years to her, that she could feel the soft oblivion of a numbed shock, but of course, no such luck. Her mind, rational and practical, logical in spite of everything she’s seen since she’d started working for the Warehouse, has already processed every single one of Helena’s words and she knows, she just knows that it was a bittersweet farewell, one that tastes like forever in her mouth.

No matter what H.G. had said, Myka doesn’t need Steve to know the words, those god forbidden words, were nothing but lies because she can feel it slipping through her fingers, flowing in the air and vanishing like a split-second thought. She can practically see their unusual relationship dissolve between her bare hands and she instinctively balls up her fists, as if she could catch the remaining strands of that friendship, or whatever it is, or rather was, in her palms, but it is vain and useless.  
She can’t hold on to what has already started to become smoke, she can only look at the ashes as they become cold and black, lifeless.

She glances in the rear view and bites back a sob, watching as Helena’s slender silhouette is slowly but surely being swallowed by the darkness of the night. It seems to be a theme for the British woman, to be engulfed by some mysterious obscurity every time they meet, from the very beginning, to this day she couldn’t bring herself to call an end. Since day one, Helena had been walking out on her more times than she cares to count, it should have been a sign.

She tries to imagine a smile on those lips she had dreamed of kissing more than once, but her mind relents and rebels against the very thought of it and so the graceful features of the time lady remain frozen in something that bears the faintest resemblance to melancholia.

A line comes back to her mind as the whole road with the house, the man, the child and the lady came from another time, faded away in the distance. She doesn’t remember where it comes from, if it’s a book, a movie, a poem or something else entirely and the very fact she can’t find the source whispers into her ears that she isn’t, in fact, fine. Not at all.  
She wonders if she ever will be fine again, as the words endlessly echo into her broken mind, as if directly murmured from her equally shattered heart.

Some people are meant to fall in love with each other, but not meant to be together.

\---

Life goes on and the next days happen in a blur of new adventures, but somehow, she doesn’t feel like herself when she snags, bags, and tags all the new artifacts that had pinged on the Warehouse radar. Pete can sense it, but he doesn’t push, and he always averts everyone else’s attention whenever Claudia, Artie or Steve are staring at her for a moment too long, as if they could see through her dulled soul right into her unhealed heart.

Eventually, a month is gone and then another, spring goes away for better days and lets summer take over, but even the sunny days don’t last and it seems to Myka that autumn is here in the span of a couple of slow blinks.  
The leaves are falling down from the trees in a rain of colors and she used to love fall, but now, all she can think about is how sad it looks under the deluge, with the water soaking in the bruised and beaten leaves scattered on the ground, manhandled by the gushes of wind that announce winter.

They don’t push and she doesn’t talk about it, she tries to mend her broken hopes and lick her open wounds and slowly, ever so slowly, she feels like she can finally start to heal. At first, she is aware that she is making some very tiny baby steps, but Pete, Claudia, Steve, Artie, and even the new woman, Abygail, are there to smile at her and to prove to her that she matters, that she is loved and that there are people who genuinely care about her, still.

Christmas finds her crying in Pete’s shoulder because healing is a work in progress and she remembers the previous winter holidays, when a dedicated by Oscar Wilde himself had been waiting for her under the tree, with a handwritten note carefully composed on a luxurious paper that had smelled like apple and rain.

New Year’s Eve is somehow happier and she actually laughs and smiles that night, surrounded by her Warehouse family and as she goes to bed around 4am, she realizes she didn’t think the picture was incomplete, for once.

It is during a random spring evening that a soft knock on the French door of the dining room makes her look up from her laptop screen where she had been writing for the last three hours, non-stop.

Her heart squeezes painfully in her chest at the sight of the woman standing behind the glass, because even though the transparent material is neither smooth nor sleek, she instantly recognizes the glossy dark hair and the shiny leather boots. For a second, she thinks she might be dreaming and she is tempted to go back to the novel she had been putting together since last summer, but another knock, stronger this time, informs her that she isn’t, in fact, hallucinating.

She slowly puts the laptop on the cushion next to her and stands up, walking away from the couch and towards the dining room. She stops next to the door and takes in a sharp intake of breath before reaching for the handle, forcing herself to weigh on it to open the glass panel.

She doesn’t say a word as she stares into a pair of all too familiar brown eyes, soulful and deep and now she remembers why she doesn’t like fall.  
Helena’s eyes are of the color of the autumn leaves when they fall and fade, going from the brighter shades to a dead, bland brown and it is deceptively accurate. She looks well, her usually pale skin sporting a soft but healthy tan while her lips are still as pink as a baby’s cheeks and her hair, Myka notices, is sparkling underneath the last rays of a golden sun that would fall behind the horizon in a matter of minutes now.  
It smells like apple blossoms.

“Hello Myka,” Helena greets and the K is rolling from her lips as if she had been saying the name forever, it awakes undesired butterflies in the pit of Myka’s stomach. She stands still, letting the British vowels flow in the air around them and trying to ignore the urge in her head that screams for her to reach the inventor and grab her forever.

Helena looks slightly uncertain now and Myka realizes she is not the person Helena came here to see.  
She looks at the woman and she feels all the wounds she had tried to stitch back together rip open under the heavy gaze of the doe-eyes of H.G. Wells, and the worst part is, she knows a few new scars are being carved in the weakest parts of her soul. Myka wonders why it is that this woman, who was old enough to have been partying with the actual authors of the books she grew up with, has the power to render her so weak with her sole presence.

She thinks she will need to work a little harder on her healing process now that Helena showed up again and broke her wildest hopes with a single look.

She steps aside and turns around, letting the British woman in, while she goes in search of Artie, Pete or even Claudia, anyone available to break her tête-à-tête with the visitor.

She climbs the stairs two by two and barges into Claudia’s bedroom to let her know H.G. Wells is downstairs, waiting for someone to talk to. The IT prodigy looks at Myka as if she has suddenly grown three heads, but when she hears the unmistakable voice full of the familiar fancy accent, she swears and stumbles across the room to go greet Helena.

Myka doesn’t go back downstairs, choosing to take refuge in her bedroom instead.

\---

There is a knock on her door and her first instinct is to invite whoever it is to come in, but then she catches herself at the last second. She’s afraid of who it can be and when she stays silent for too long, the door opens and Pete pokes his head in.  
She doesn’t know if she feels relieved or disappointed.

“You alright Mykes?” He asks and she nods and tries to force a smile, but she gives up as the corners of her lips are halfway up. No, she is not alright, and she is far from fine and she can’t lie to him after all the progress she has made to open herself up to him, to Claudia, to Abygail.  
Not Artie, because Artie never really liked Helena in the first place and she is fairly certain he wouldn’t understand any of what she could tell him about that strange relationship that used to be theirs.

“Not really,” She finally whispers and he offers her a sweet but serious smile. She takes comfort in the fact he knows her and she is grateful when he comes in, closing the door before sitting next to her on the bed.

“Did she say something?”

She shakes her head, trying to chase away the haunting notes of the suave ‘hello’ and the rolling K that had split her name in two.

“She just said hello and when she stayed silent, I figured it wasn’t me she was here to see,” Myka murmurs and Pete’s fingers are curling around her shoulders, steady and warm, but respectful.  
She knows he would rather engulf her in a tight hug or say stupid things to try to make her laugh and so she smiles, softly, at him. He never left and he is still here, adapting to her mood and trying to keep her grounded, like a true friend would.  
There are no expectation between them, they are friends and they have each other’s back, in the field and everywhere else and she trusts him with her life.

“Do you mind if I stay with you for a while?” He sounds a little hesitant, and for a second she is tempted to accept his offer, but then she realizes she would rather be alone for now.

“Thank you Pete, but I think I need to be alone for a while. Will you come back and let me know when she is gone?” Myka asks, holding back the word ‘again’ at the very last moment, but by the look on Pete’s face, he heard it as clear as if she had indeed said it.

“Will do,” He waves at her and then exits the room, leaving her alone with her thoughts and memories.

She lets out a long and shuddering sigh, wraps her arms around her chest and then suddenly, she can’t stand still anymore.

The room is too small and she can feel the walls close in on herself, threatening to choke her. She gasps for oxygen but her mind is racing and her heart is beating hard against her ribcage and she needs space, she needs air and in a series of blurred movements that send a lamp on the floor, knock out a chair and push a dresser a few inches to the side, she’s out through the windows.

The rational part of her mind is scowling at her for behaving like a moody teenager, but the thousand broken pieces of her heart are grateful for the respite provided by the strange exit.

She walks away from the B&B and the night is not far away, the shadows growing around her with every step she takes. The air is crisp and already humid, like an evening spring tainted with dew and mists that will last until morning.

Her head is full of images of glossy dark hair and sparkling brown eyes, of apple slices and leather boots, echoing with a voice that sounds too rich and too deep to be true and she aches. She aches because it’s been almost a year, but she is still hurting, the damage being more profound and grave than she thought it was.

She ventures deeper into the forest surrounding the cozy little building she had grown to call home and her feet stumble across half-buried roots, broken branches, fallen trunks and thick bushes, but she doesn’t stop.

She doesn’t stop until she finds herself on the other side of the forest facing a clearing that looks like a dangerous and dark area, bathing in the obscurity of the settled dusk.  
She knows there is a small brook coursing through the grass, not very wide, but enough to force someone to jump to cross it. Pete fell into it once, breaking his ankle and the whole Warehouse crew had heard about it for months afterward. It almost makes her smile, to remember something other than Helena, but it doesn’t last.

It doesn’t last because suddenly, there is the very voice she had been trying to avoid, speaking from somewhere behind her.

\---

“I knew you would come here, you always do when something upsets you.”

How did Helena get here almost at the same time she did, Myka doesn’t know and she doesn’t ask. She mourns her now lost solitude, not paying attention to the branches cracking under the heels of Helena’s boots and the next thing she knows, there is this body standing next to hers in the darkness of the night.

The night, it seems, loves Helena enough to always wrap her in a blanket of shadows the glowing moonlight can never fully reach. Her pale skin stands out in the absence of any light but her hair, her silken, glossy hair sparkles from within and for a few seconds, Myka wonders if H.G. Wells is even real.

It is, she thinks, a reasonable question to ask oneself when it comes to the woman that had crossed centuries to be standing here, under the stars, at the very edge of a clearing in the middle of South Dakota.

The words Helena said suddenly come back to her mind and she lets out a dry chuckle, one that makes the inventor arch a perfectly sculpted brow.

“When something upsets me, you said. I find your words funny,” Myka whispered, not wanting to break the relative peace of the place despite the turmoil of her emotions making her head abuzz with thoughts and words she didn’t want to say out loud.

“What are you doing here, Helena?” She asks without waiting for the woman to think of something smart to answer. She is too exhausted to deal with their usual verbal jousts tonight.

“I came to inform Claudia that a potential artifact has reappeared in Paris, one that has the power to grant incredible artistic gifts to anyone …” Helena starts and for a few seconds, Myka is charmed by the old accent and the raspy voice, but then she interjects.

“I don’t mean here in South Dakota, I mean here in the clearing, next to me,” She clarifies and she doesn’t need to look to know her question took Helena by surprise.  
It’s odd, Myka thinks. Helena is always so sure of herself, quick to answer, she never misses a beat and her wits are strangely cutting for someone who has lived in a time when women were barely allowed to open their mouth at all.

“I came to see if you are alright, Myka, I thought it was obvious,” Helena finally answers and Myka arches a brow that almost gets lost in the line of her hair.

“You are here to check up on me? What a strange thing to do,” She wonders out loud and Helena turns her head to look right into her eyes. Gosh, Myka thinks, she really hates fall.

“Why is that?” The words are tinted with what sounds like genuine surprise and a hint of hurt, but Myka doesn’t care.

“What happened to you wanting a new life, as far away as possible from the Warehouse and its artifacts?” She eludes, thinking back on this day where Helena had carved a brand new scar in her heart with those very words.

“I … “ Helena trails off and Myka nods, almost to herself. She knows for a fact it is not that easy to walk away from this life of endless wonder that had become, without her even noticing, a huge part of her identity.  
She figures that Helena, who has been doing this for far longer than she has, didn’t manage to free herself from the complex and unbreakable bundle of link that connected every single one of the agents to the current Warehouse.

“Well, at least you tried,” Myka offers and she doesn’t understand why she tries to be nice. She curses her fundamentally good disposition for that because she wants nothing more than to be angry, to let out all the venomous words that are struck in her throat, and to turn her back on this woman who has done the same thing to her way too many times already.

“Not really, no,” Helena counters and her tone is soft, carried away by the stillness of the air between them. The words flow and swirl in the night, leaving a sweet echo in Myka’s ears.

“Figures,” Myka mutters and then she sighs. “Are you here to ask Artie to reinstate you as an agent or something?”

Helena takes her time to answer and when she does, her voice is quiet, she sounds small. “Would you like that?”

Myka hates when someone answers her question with another question, she really hates it. She thinks it’s the sort of trick one would use with a child and that is exactly why she is still unnerved sometimes around Abygail, the psychotherapist who uses the same rhetoric to make people talk about their feelings.

God knows she doesn’t want to talk about feelings, she doesn’t even want to have feelings in the first place.

“Why do you suddenly care what I think? Why don’t you go ask Nate and Adelaide if they are okay with you chasing artifacts around the globe again? I don’t have a say in this, but they do,” The bitter sweetness dripping from her words is deafening, even to her own ears.

Helena doesn’t answer and the silence that settles is only troubled by the occasional ruffles of the wind atop the trees or some birds chirping and flying nearby. Stars are beginning to sparkle in the clear, bright sky, forming a glittering ocean above their heads and Myka finds it comforting, to have something to look at that isn’t entirely black.

“I broke up with Nate a long time ago,” Helena finally breaks the silence, the words escaping her lips and a heavy note of regret is underlining her peculiar diction. “He had no idea who I really was, and with time, it dug a canyon in our relationship, one neither of us could cross. I’ve been traveling alone for quite some time now, wandering across countries that didn’t even exist when I grew up, learning the new maps of the world with my feet and my wits.”

Myka nods, internally fighting again the blossoming feeling of hope that begins to spread around her heart. She doesn’t want to hope, it’s painful and pointless and she can’t afford it, not again.

“I thought about coming back to the Warehouse, as I came across a few artifacts during my travels, but I assumed … I assumed it wasn’t right. Perhaps it was too soon or perhaps it was something else entirely, maybe I was just scared,” Helena’s voice is grave and serious and Myka doesn’t even realize she is leaning towards the woman who smells like apple and morning dew. “I told you, that day, that you would never lose this friendship, but I admit I might have been lying at the time, for it was never a friendship to begin with.”

Myka narrows her eyes at that, confusion twisting her features as she moved her head to look at the woman next to her. The stars, not quite as bright as they could be during summer, are reflecting in the brown shades of Helena’s eyes and the galaxy they form is deeply fascinating, almost enough to distract her from the words that are being spoken.

“I met you at gunpoint, a few years ago and while you were angry with me for all the reasons you and I know, I think back then, I was already starting to fall,” Helena says and the corners of her lips are twitching, as if a smile was menacing to break through. “You were different. You actively seeked my advice and my expertise and for reasons that I still don’t know as of today, you chose to believe in me. No one, not even my closest family ever did that, and yet there you were, a perfect stranger, putting your faith in me, defending me even when I didn’t deserve it, talking me into the right decisions and still standing by me after everything I had done.”

A thought blinks in Myka’s mind, one that informs her those words sound like a declaration, but the logical side of her brain rejects it entirely and then, the flickering notion is gone.

“I’ve done terrible things in my life, Myka. Grief, anger, relentless suffering and a burning desire for vengeance can destroy a person to the point where they are stripped from all their remaining shreds of humanity and for a long while, I walked down that path. It took you, to bring me back from the edge of eternal perdition. In Yellowstone that day, you placed the gun I was holding onto your forehead and the first thing I thought was “no”. No, I couldn’t kill you, I never wanted to and then I realized that if it was the price to pay to try to make the world a better place, I didn’t want to pay it.”

Myka sees tears full of stars in Helena’s brown and soulful eyes and she thinks it’s the most honest and open the British woman has ever been around her. She doesn’t move, but she slowly tilts her head to the side, implicitly inviting Helena to keep talking. A lump goes up and then down in Helena’s throat, but she takes a deep breath and steels herself to continue.

“I had all the time in the world to think back on my actions, once I was trapped in an holographic state while my physical body was living the life of a teacher in Wyoming, with a distastefully named cat,” She says and the faintest hint of annoyance can be heard in the way she pronounces the name of the state as well as the few last words. “You were still defending me though and I can not possibly try to describe how warm and good it felt, to see you fight for me, for my long lost reputation and when the time came to destroy the coin that would have reunited my mind and my body, it broke my heart. You were so adamant it wasn’t the right thing to do, even though you knew, deep down, that there was no other solution. I often think back on that day, the look on your face as you refused to cry and the heavy tone when you answered my question about saying goodbye to the people who know you better than anyone else …”

Myka remembers that day, too vividly to her liking. She still has nightmares about that scene in the woods, where the look in Helena’s eyes had been burning holes in her very soul because of how filled they were with sadness and regret.

“It was you, Myka. It is you, that person. I realize it might seem strange, we don’t know each other that much, we haven’t been in each other’s presence for that long and there are, quite literally, centuries in between us, but you understand me, you anticipate me even and more importantly, you believe in me. You chose to and I certainly hope, that you still do.” Helena’s voice is now strangled with emotion and the tears are no longer contained in her sparkling eyes, but rolling down her face, digging stains across her pale cheeks.

Myka stares into those brown eyes that evoke to her the passage of the seasons, the cold winter nights and the sunny summer days, spring’s crisp mornings and autumn’s warm evenings, the smell of apple and scones, the taste of tea and rain and the feeling of a life full of wonders of another kind, one she has been craving for too long.

She doesn’t think, because she’s done thinking and listening to reason when all she wants is to surrender to the desires of her heart. She reaches both hands up to cup Helena’s face and she brings her close, so impossibly close that there is no air left between them.

Helena only blinks, but then she closes her eyes and leans forward, and Myka, Myka finally throws her reason away for good to meet Helena halfway.

The kiss is everything but soft, and there is anger and regret swirling around their intertwined tongues, remorse and unsaid scowls thundering as Myka closes her teeth around Helena’s supple bottom lip, desire and promise exploding when their mouths meet again after a split-second break that barely allows them to catch their breath.

Myka is the one to pull away, breathless and panting, but she can feel the worries come back running in the back of her mind because her logic could only be quieted for so long.

“What is it?” Helena asks, wrapping her arms around Myka’s middle and looking up to meet her eyes.

“Are you going to walk out on me again?” Myka blurts out, because she’s terrified of having made a huge mistake now that she realizes her heart won’t take it if Helena disappears again after this.

“No. I’ve been running away for far too long and there is no place I would rather be than here, right this moment. Pardon me for the cheesy line, but I’ve come to realize that between your arms is where I belong and if it is alright with you, I would like to stay, for as long as you will have me,” Helena states and Myka’s heart explodes in her chest at how sure and certain the English accent makes the words sound.

“Hm, I think I can indeed forgive you for the sappy line, in that case,” Myka whispers and Helena arches an unimpressed brow. It gives her face a sarcastic look that makes Myka chuckle, and this time, the sound is genuine and pure, coming from the bottom of her heart.

She sounds happy, she thinks as she leans forward to kiss Helena again.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, ladies and gentlemen!
> 
> I'm very very new to the Warehouse 13/ Bering & Wells fandom but those ladies broke my heart and here's an attempt at fixing it, set right after the episode 4x15. I should mention that I haven't finished season 4 yet and I've been told to avoid season 5 entirely ... 
> 
> I am only posting this because SOMEONE was on my ass for me to put it out there in the open.
> 
> I can be found on tumblr, I'm **lost-your-memory** there and while it might look like a supercat tumblr, I am really multi-shipping everything so, feel free to come say hi!
> 
> ♥


End file.
